1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a production system for the series manufacture of products, in which the products are manufactured to size from blanks by a processing operation, in particular by a machining-operation, such as, for example, drilling, milling, grinding, roughing and finishing.
2. Discussion of Background
Such a production system normally comprises one or more processing devices which permit automatic processing, preferably automatic machining, of the products. In this case, such a processing device, as a function of control commands, actuates one or more tools, in particular cutting tools, for processing the respective product. For example, such a processing device is a CNC milling machine.
In the case of products which are manufactured successively with such a processing device, the geometric dimensions of the products may as a rule not be exactly adhered to. This may be attributed, on the one hand, to inherent tolerances of the processing device, which occur, for example, when the respective tool does not start the processing of the next product exactly at the same starting position as in the case of the preceding product. The higher the quality of the processing device, the smaller are these inherent repetitive tolerances. On the other hand, tool wear and temperature effects may influence the dimensional accuracy of the production operation.
For the quality assurance of the production process, the processed products are each measured or are measured at random by a suitable measuring device. The measuring records thus produced manually or automatically are evaluated by the respective machine operator in order to be able to correct, if need be, the control commands of the processing device in a suitable manner. There is the problem here that smaller corrections, on account of the cost associated with them, cannot be carried out without delaying the production to an excessive degree. Furthermore, input errors may occur. In addition, correlations which cannot always be fully grasped by the machine operator occur between individual dimensions, so that the correction of a first dimension may entail impairment of a second dimension or of further dimensions.